By Kari Williamson

The project is funded by the US Department of Energy (DoE) and designed to gain knowledge about the benefits and challenges associated with developing offshore wind generation facilities off the coasts of North and South Carolina.

The Carolinas Offshore Wind Integration Case Study will assess viable offshore wind deployment sites, evaluate the impact of development of three different amounts of installed offshore wind generation capacity, evaluate the effect of various collection and interconnection technologies and methods, and assess the operational impacts to Duke Energy Carolinas electric power system.

“Our goal is to fully understand how the abundant wind resource off the coast of the Carolinas – and North Carolina, in particular – can help reshape our long-term energy outlook,” says Duke Energy Vice President Christopher Fallon.

“We’ve assembled a project team with tremendous expertise and talent, and we look forward to sharing the results of our study with interested parties in the Carolinas and throughout the country.”

AWS Truepower’s primary role will be to create wind generation profiles for hypothetical offshore wind farms. This will be accomplished through the firm’s site selection algorithm which selects likely locations for offshore wind farm development and simulates the potential project build out.

AWS' numerical weather prediction models will also be used to simulate multiple years of wind and weather profiles which will be converted into energy output profiles at each simulated offshore site.